About The Global Risk Census
The Global Risk Census was conceived by risk professionals and is overseen by Risk Sciences International as a global public interest project.
The goal of The Global Risk Census is to provide risk insights for decision-makers, policy-makers and the general public by reaching out to people who are able to observe local conditions and risk factors which, when they deteriorate, can lead to a situation of risk either locally or worldwide.
Roles: Analysis | Administration | Infrastructure | Promotion
The Global Risk Census secretariat provides the data analysis, administers the organization and manages the infrastructure needed to execute the process. The secretariat is responsible for promotion activities.
Cemil 'Jim' Alyanak
Census General Manager
Cemil 'Jim' Alyanak, serves as General Manager for the Global Risk Census and VP Communications and Strategic Initiatives at Risk Sciences International. At RSI, Cemil has three key functions: to head RSI’s risk communications projects, to develop unique RSI strategic initiatives, and to help develop the company across borders and oceans. Cemil is particularly interested on the goal-driven use of risk communication paired with an understanding of how people perceive a risk message. “People regularly communicate because of risk,” Cemil says, adding “but the problem is one of goals; all too often risk communication lacks clear outcomes, it seems to be more about reacting than getting to a better place.” Indeed, Cemil is laser-focussed on helping clients determine the right goal before moving on to the resolution of a risk communication challenge. Cemil is also working diligently to develop The Global Risk Census and its ancillary projects. This public interest effort lines up perfectly with his theories of risk convergence as outline in his book The Critical Century.
Daniel Krewski
Census Director of Science
Daniel Krewski (PhD, MHA) serves as Director of Science for the Global Risk Census and Chief Risk Scientist and CEO at Risk Sciences International, a Canadian company founded in 2006 in partnership with the University of Ottawa. He also holds academic appointments as Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health and Scientific Director of the McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Daniel Krewski is a Fellow of the Society of Risk Analysis and the American Statistical Association, and a lifetime National Affiliate of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2013, he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Risk Analysis, for excellent performance in the practice of risk analysis. He has contributed to over 900 scientific and technical publications in the field of risk science during the course of his career.
Greg Paoli
Census Director of Operations
Greg Paoli (MASc) serves as Director of Operations for the Global Risk Census and Principal Risk Scientist and COO at Risk Sciences International. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1991) and a Master’s Degree in Systems Design Engineering (1993), both degrees from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. For his Master’s thesis, he wrote software to capture information on the timing and patterns of ‘firing’ of nerves that trigger muscle contractions measured from surface electromyograms (like an electrocardiogram or EKG, but for skeletal muscles). The software then processed the information using pattern recognition and machine intelligence techniques. The results of the analysis helped clinical neurologists in their diagnosis of neuromuscular diseases. As RSI’s Principal Risk Scientist and COO, Greg Paoli is currently working with a broad spectrum of clients in the public and private sectors, with the greatest emphasis on the development of new approaches to transform regulatory systems to be more “risk-based” at multiple levels: how senior decision-makers process risk information and make the “tough choices” in regulating health and safety, how an organization can optimize its resources across a diverse mandate to maximize total “portfolio-level” risk reduction, and how to operationalize key resources like the scheduling of inspections when faced with thousands of inspection targets, but not enough resources to inspect all of them.
Franco Momoli
Census Director of Data Analysis
Franco Momoli (PhD, Mac) serves as Director of Data Analysis for the Global Risk Census as well as Practice Lead, Chemical and Product Safety at Risk Sciences International. Dr. Momoli is the acting Practice Lead for Chemical and Product Safety at Risk Sciences International, as well as an adjunct professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. While with RSI as a practice lead, Dr. Momoli has led projects for various international organizations and agencies, including projects on diverse topics, such as international prioritization strategies during an influenza pandemic, use of consumer products in the workplace, screening of indoor semi-volatile organic compounds, prioritization of air pollutants, and updates of hazard assessments for aluminium and aluminium nanoproducts.
Jennifer Go
Senior Data Analyst, Epidemiologist
Jennifer Go (MSc) as Data Analyst and Epidemiologist for both the Global Risk Census and Risk Sciences International. Jennifer joined RSI in August of 2017 as a Risk Analyst with specialization in epidemiology. She possesses a diverse set of skills that contributes to her flexibility to work on a wide range of scientific projects. In particular, Jennifer has research experience in conducting systematic reviews, manipulating large datasets, and constructing statistical models. To date, she has been involved with a number of literature reviews on various topics, including the association of parabens with reproductive and endocrine effects, the potential therapeutic benefits of cannabis use during active cancer treatment, and the pharmacoeconomic evaluation of botulinum toxin type A products for select indications. Her expertise in quantitative epidemiology has allowed her to engage in a number of activities involving data from various sources, including electronic health records and questionnaires, notably The Global Risk Census.
Roles: Thematic oversight | Ethics
The Global Risk Census is fortunate to have a group of independent advisors who volunteer their counsel for this public interest project. They purposely come from diverse walks of life, different cultures, and different generations, helping keep the Census grounded in real world issues by providing thematic guidance and oversight. The Advisory Board also makes recommendations on matters of ethics both for themes covered and questions asked.
Doug McNair
Advisory Board Member - Appointed 2022
Doug McNair (MD PhD) serves as a Deputy Director in the Quantitative Sciences Integrated Development division of Global Health at the Gates Foundation. He assists the Foundation’s programs with disease-specific biostatistics and quantitative trial design in tuberculosis, HIV, HPV, malaria and other mosquito-born diseases, childhood diseases, chronic diseases, neglected tropical diseases, as well as COVID and other epidemic-related therapeutic and vaccine product development. He also assists with cross-division product development programs, including Discovery & Translational Sciences, Vaccine Development, PBPK modeling, and drug safety. His activity also includes biomarker discovery from Real World Data and machine-learning and predictive mathematical modeling of health economics and HSS health finance projects collaborating with Global Development, including aspects related to gender equity. Doug is lead inventor on more than 100 patents and pending patent applications, including several involving Bayesian predictive models for clinical diagnostics. Prior to joining the Gates Foundation in 2019, Doug was President of Cerner Corporation’s predictive math modeling and AI division (Cerner Math Inc.) where he led a team of statisticians, data scientists, applied mathematicians, bioinformaticists, and financial engineers, performing health services research, pharmacovigilance, and discovering AI predictive models from real-world de-identified EHR-derived Big Data.
Santiago Perez-Lloret
Advisory Board Member - Appointed 2022
Santiago Perez-Lloret (MD, PhD) is a leading expert in neurophysiology and neuropharmacology with more 115 papers published in international medical journals (Scopus H-index=31). He has recently edited the book “Clinical trials in Parkinson’s Disease” (Springer-Verlag). After obtaining his MD and PhD in the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he pursued master courses in pharmacoepidemiology, clinical pharmacology and biostatistics at the Universities of Toulouse, Bordeaux and Paris, France. Dr. Perez-Lloret is an Assistant professor of Neurophysiology at the Medicine School of the University of Buenos Aires and a Senior Researcher at the Argentinean National Research Council. He is the director of the Data Science Research Laboratory at the Catholic University of Argentina. He is also an Associate Editor at the Frontiers in Pharmacology and BMC Neurology journals. He is a member of the Evidence-Based Medicine Committee of the International Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorder Society (MDS).
Visit Santiago Perez-Lloret's Linkedin profile
Visit his scholar's profile
Ri-Hua Xie
Advisory Board Member - Appointed 2022
Dr. Ri-hua Xie (RN, PhD and FAAN) serves as the Director and chief-nurse, and professor at The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangdong, China. Dr. Xie is respected as a clinician, researcher, and mentor. She has published 70 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals and 9 nursing textbooks. Dr. Xie is also devoted her professional attention to the important and impactful community services. The most recent example of such dedicated services is her leadership role in her regional efforts to control COVID-2019 pandemic in China. Dr. Xie received her BSN, MSN, and PhD in nursing from Xiangya School of Nursing, Central South University, China, and had her Postdoctoral Fellowship training from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Xie is a Fellow of American Association of Nursing (FAAN) and an affiliated scientist in the University of Ottawa Mclaughlin Center for Population Health Risk Assessment.
Amy Clippinger
Advisory Board Member - Appointed 2022
Amy Clippinger (PhD) directs the regulatory testing department of PETA US and is president of PETA Science Consortium International e.V. She received her doctorate in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Genetics in 2009 from Drexel University College of Medicine and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Biology Department at the University of Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2012. In 2012, Dr. Clippinger joined the Science Consortium where she collaborates with industry, academia, and regulatory agencies to advance reliable and relevant non-animal toxicity testing approaches. She is member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Alternative Toxicological Methods (SACATM) that advises the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) and the National Toxicology Program Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM). She is a member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT), recipient of the SOT 2022 Enhancement of Animal Welfare Award, and Past President of the SOT In Vitro and Alternative Methods Specialty Section. She is on the board of directors of the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology and the editorial board of Applied In Vitro Toxicology and Frontiers in In Vitro Toxicology.
Visit PETA International Science Consortium
Visit Dr. Clippinger's LinkedIn page
Kim Lavoie
Advisory Board Member - Appointed 2022
Dr. Kim Lavoie, PhD, FCPA, FABMR is a full professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Quebec at Montreal and holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Medicine. She is also Co-Director of the Montréal Behavioural Medicine Centre (MBMC, https://mbmc-cmcm.ca/), a researcher at the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et service sociaux du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal (CIUSSS-NIM), co-lead of the International Behavioural Trials Network (IBTN, https://www.ibtnetwork.org/), and Chair of the Canadian Network for Health Behaviour Change (https://can-change.ca/). Dr. Lavoie's work focuses on research in three areas: (1) the impact of psychological stress (e.g., depression, anxiety) and lifestyle factors (diet, exercise, smoking, adherence) on the development and progression of chronic illnesses (e.g., cardiovascular disease, asthma, COPD, obesity); (2) psychophysiological and behavioural mechanisms linking psychological stress to disease; and (3) behavioural medicine (e.g., behavioural interventions for chronic illnesses, including motivational communication and cognitive-behavioral therapy).
Nicholas You
Advisory Board Member - Appointed 2022
Nicholas You is a veteran urban specialist. He served as the senior policy and planning advisor to UN-Habitat and as the manager of the Habitat II Conference held in Istanbul in 1996. He is the founder and honorary chairman of the UN-Habitat World Urban Campaign Steering Committee, former think tank and thought leader for among others, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Siemens, ENGIE and the Global Cities Business Alliance. He served for several years as an adjunct to the Center for Livable Cities, Singapore. He is currently the Executive Director of the Guangzhou Institute for Urban Innovation and co-Chair of the Open Green City Lab in Shenzhen. He regularly advises central and local governments, technology companies and civil society organisations on urban sustainability, urban governance and urban innovation and has written and co-authored key policy papers for the U20. A key component of urban innovation is thinking out of the box – but the path from thinking to action includes risk – how to assess it and how to manage it.
Questions regarding our Advisory Board?
Roles: Financial support | Financial accountability
The Global Risk Census benefits from the financial support of generous institutions.
Class of 2022
Founding Funder
Risk Sciences International
Provided the generous support necessary to launch the initiative. Provides ongoing support.
Questions regarding funding?
Roles: Issues guidance | Participant outreach | Specialized questionnaires
The Global Risk Census benefits from the support of institutions and companies. Each partner lends support either in the form of guidance on issues, outreach to participants through their own network, development and operationalization of specialized questionnaires dealing with their sphere of activity, or visibility via online or traditional exposure efforts.
If you are interested in collaborating with The Global Risk Census, you will find more information here.
Risk Sciences International
We are risk scientists, helping business, civil society, and governments, to better face uncertainty and the unexpected. Based in Ottawa and Washington D.C., RSI works worldwide to tackle risk in chemical and product safety, public health, food safety and defense, climate change adaptation, agriculture, drug safety, public safety and security, and urban risk and resiliency.
Climate Risk Institute
The Climate Risk Institute (CRI) works to advance practice and deliver services related to climate change risk assessment, adaptation planning, policy evaluation and resiliency. CRI’s mission is to acquire, develop and disseminate knowledge on climate change and its impacts, improve capacity to assess and manage these impacts, and collaborate with policymakers and practitioners to advance climate resiliency in the communities, regions, and sectors for whom they work.
The International Association For Political Science Students
The International Association for Political Science Students (IAPSS) is the worldwide representation of students of political science and related studies. IAPSS strives to deliver a sustainable academic contribution to the education of its members, foster exchange among young political scientists across the globe, and promote social and scientific responsibility. IAPSS offers a multiplicity of events, publications, professionalization, and career services as well as lobbying for political science interests on the international level.
Excess Noise
Providing The Global Risk Census with perception analysis and subject-matter expertise.
Questions regarding partnership and support?
Roles: Web support | Design
The Global Risk Census is appreciative of companies that have, either through their in-kind donations or exemplary support, allow The Global Risk Census to function.
Formidable Forms
Application used to build questionnaires
Formidable Forms is the best WordPress forms plugin to create simple, one-page contact forms that save you time and money. No need for expensive 3rd party developers or designers! Create your form in minutes without wasting precious hours coding. With its easy-to-use interface, Formidable Forms unlocks a world of possibilities for your sites by giving them power and flexibility without needing any knowledge of code or programming languages like PHP. Quickly turn your forms into powerful data-driven applications with this intuitive tool that allows complete customization from form fields/labels to conditional logic and calculations!
Questions regarding supporting our technical needs?
Roles: Stakeholder outreach and liaison | National representation
The Global Risk Census welcomes the efforts of individuals who are able to connect The Global Risk Census with large outreach organizations, to national media and to stakeholders more broadly.
Questions regarding supporting or representing the Census?
Roles: Reviewing | Subject Matter Expertise | Translation
Reviewers
The Global Risk Census is a multidimensional, international project. As such, it requires constant reviewing by people with multiple points of view. If you are interested in taking the Census and simultaneously rating and commenting on each of the questions, we invite you to do so; please express your interest!
Subject Matter Experts
The Global Risk Census has the ambition of covering a wide spectrum of conditions that have the potential to evolve into situations of risk. As such, The Global Risk Census is interested in growing its list of volunteer subject matter experts. If you are an expert in a field of social consequence, we encourage you to volunteer. The form below is an initial step. Upon receipt, we will reply with a procedure to submit your interest and qualifications in greater detail.
Translators
The Global Risk Census was originally written in English. For it to be truly global, it requires multiple translations. If you are a qualified, certified translator who wishes to volunteer some time to translate this all important Global Risk Census, please fill out the form below and, as with Subject Matter Experts, we will send you a procedure to follow.
Thank you, this public service project depends on your contributions.
Questions regarding contributing to the Census?
The Story Behind the Census
The Global Risk Census is the natural intersection of two lifelong quests.
The first, the science of risk, is what Dr. Daniel Krewski, Chief Risk Scientist at Risk Sciences International, has spent his entire career committed to. His academic and professional credentials make Dr. Krewski eminently qualified to lead the scientific work of The Global Risk Census.
Pursuing the quest of risk-based decision-making (RBDM) is Greg Paoli, who went from being an engineer to a leading global authority on RBDM and all facets of operationalizing risk strategies. His ongoing work with governments, civil society and industry make him the natural choice to lead operations at The Global Risk Census.
The final quest is that of risk convergence. As detailed in his book, The Critical Century, Cemil Alyanak has spent a lifetime trying to understand how society can best navigate what he describes as a dangerous time for our planet in which too many risks are converging with some so potentially severe, that a single failure could cause all the others to follow.
These three passions, the science of risk combined with risk-based decision-making, and the potentially catastrophic social and environmental consequences of converging system failure, are what led to the creation of The Global Risk Census. Its mission is focussed: to bring together as many people as possible, from as many walks of life as possible, so that together we can anticipate risks.
2019-03-06
The seed
While sharing a vegan dinner, Daniel Krewski and Cemil Alyanak both arrive at the same conclusion, the world is in a period of chaos with multiple points of potential failure. Something more has to be done, not sure what, but something.
2019-11-23
The solution
After multiple iterations, it becomes clear that global top-down data is both abundant and insufficient. If we are to anticipate risks better, we need to get closer to the source; we have to get to the root causes.
2019-12-18
The tool
Cemil presents Daniel with a first concept paper for what becomes The Global Risk Census. In it, Cemil outlines the concept and presents a budget and fundraising plan.
2020-05-06
The reversal
Now a few months into the Pandemic, a key conversation changes the course of the project. What if, rather than raising funds first, we build The Global Risk Census internally, with our own resources? Can we pull it off? Do we have the people? Do we have the IT knowhow and infrastructure? The answer is yes to all and the decision is made: The Global Risk Census will start as an internally supported and funded project. We will look for the necessary external funding later.
2020-06-22
Work begins
It's the first day of Spring 2020. The news is focussed on the Pandemic. There is urgency. The team splits into two. On the one hand RSI begins development of the platform. It will have to be robust, scalable and ready to be ported to an even larger system when the Census takes off. The other team starts to work on the questions that will become the Main Questionnaire. The ambitious goal of having a draft working model at the end of the year is agreed upon.
2020-12-29
We have a domain
There is consensus on the name of the domain. The website of The Global Risk Census will be 'riskcensus.org'.
2020-12-31
Unrealistic deadline
By the end of the year, it becomes evident that the deadline was unrealistic. The platform needs more work and the questions need much more thought. This is when the team realizes that it is going to have to call in external subject-matter experts to ensure the questions are relevant and well-phrased. So, rather than do a bad, rushed job, Daniel and Cemil make a decision that will later prove wise, they give themselves a full year to do it right.
2021-09-08
First working draft
The first working draft of The Global Risk Census website is up and running. The draft questions are up and ready for subject-matter reviewers to take a first look. Daniel and Cemil expect that there will be many changes; they were right.
2021-12-20
Revisions are in
Over 60 reviewers of all ages, walks of life, from all over the world, complete their evaluation of the Census and provide very detailed and helpful comments.
2022-01-04
First Advisory Board members
The need for a well-balanced and engaged Advisory Board has always been considered key to the success of The Global Risk Census. January 4 marks the acceptance of the first Board Member.
2022-03-01
Soft launch
Without fanfare, The Global Risk Census is live, it is online and ready to be filled in by participants. We will make lots of noise later, for now, it is time to test the tool, fix anything that may break when it gets busy, and start reaching out to stakeholders. It's an exciting day, indeed.
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Canada
The Global Risk Census was conceived in Ottawa.
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The World
Our mission is truly global.
One last thing
Would you like to know why we chose the word Census?
*Stakeholder responsibility
Stakeholders, including Advisory Board Members, Donors, Outreach organizations, and all others volunteering their time and resources to the Project, shall not in any way be held responsible for the actions or consequences thereof made by The Global Risk Census.
